Thursday, January 5, 2012

I see that at some point tonight xkcd will hit the big one oh oh oh and publish its thousandth comic (really the 999th, since he cleverly skipped #404, because, you know, it was not found).

This seems an auspicious time and one where I, the only good thing that has happened to this site, should comment on it. But I can't think of anything to say besides "hey guys come look at THAT" so perhaps I'll just have to wait until the comic itself comes out.

I suppose given the last 500 or so a last-5-minute rush job is fairly apt.

Waiting for the joke.

And "thank you for making me feel less alone" is genius. As if the diminishing amount of attention he gets from his web-comic audience could ever compensate for the absence of Megan's milky goodness...

Of course! the 1000th comic being the number "1000" written large. GENIUS. This almost beats 20 June 1887 when 50 foreign dignitaries sat themselves in a big L shape (cos Roman numerals were cool back then) while 50 hot air balloons engaged in a record-breaking flypast to celebrate Victoria's Golden Jubilee, or design heroes Apple when they built a Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh in the shape of a 2 and a 0. Why didn't we all see this coming?

Also it reminds me of my brother's Where's Wally books from like ages ago except that there'd usually be a sequence of events between arranged characters and you know detail and stuff.

But I must give myself a small rosette for expecting something about only powers of two being relevant. COS BINARY IS WHAT COMPUTERS USE YOU KNOW.

I like it. Not particularly smug or self congratulatory. Took a while to draw. References to old comics (doctorow, sideways gravity guy, hamsterball) are in there but not thrown in your face. The obligatory nerd reference is off focus. He could certainly have done a lot worse.

While I have infinite respect for the opinion of Anonymous, I'm fairly sure that shaping your 1000th turd into the number "1000" is self-congratulatory. OK it's at most the 999th. And we can all admit that the first 3-400 were often not turds. Anyway, that.

The individual drawings are all a bit "guise remember all the fun we had together?" and I herewith propose...

it's a formal word though, not something generally used as part of colloquial speech on an internet forum. sure, it has meaning and you can use it, but it makes you look like a hipster douche when you do.

Now weaselsoup's put 'er oar in I'm forced to make a serious response.

"Herewith" has both the formal and current meaning "with this [missive]" and the less formal but more archaic "hereby".

"I herewith propose [link to response]," could therefore mean either, "Within this post I propose [here]," or, "I propose by virtue of [the observation that 'the individual drawings are all a bit...']." Both interpretations fit and both were intended to fit.

weaselsoup's edit, while producing a more familiar and safe phrase, ferries even to the reader not marking an English exam the stilted sense that the writer is trying to prove he knows how to use the word rather than enjoy the flexibility of language.

If preparing a legal document I would probably not allow a word to be so interpreted in two different but equally meaningful ways. The learned Anonymous@4:12 has observed that this is merely an "internet forum" so this test is not applicable.

carl please come back rob is retarded and he is ruining everything and i hate him

i know i am saying this in a manner that might appear facetious especially because a common joke on this blog is to dump on rob but i actually do honestly feel that you need to come back and stop rob from ruining everything

I think it has a natural life cycle. XKCD sucks is probably morphing into XKCD explained - less surface venom, way more real venom, and more deadpan. And we know where that ended up.This is still the best "blog about XKCD" but that's like someone I was reading about who was one of the leading Tiny Tim scholars.

1024 isn't really all that round a number. What's the big deal about 2^10? That it's ^10? Or that it's pretty close to 10^3? 1024 is only meaningful with reference to a base-10 system. 256 is where it's at for real binary nerds.

Besides, so many people use computers and know basic binary now that there's no way it could be considered nerdy. Maybe if he does a "Happy 10000" comic when we get to 2401, it'll be slightly more exclusive, though still not funny.

8:03, using my skill and magick I determine the following Asperger mind principles:

(1) Something is meaningful iff it is interesting to the Asperger mind; (contrast the neurotypical who understands not to make value judgements based on how interesting he finds something)

(2) Something is interesting to the Asperger mind iff it finds a connection to anything else which is interesting to the Asperger mind; (contrast the neurotypical who is able to judge the relevance of connections)

(3) The easier something is to the Asperger mind, the more interesting it is; (contrast the neurotypical who understands the need to move outside his comfort zone)

(4) If one of something is interesting then two of something is twice as interesting; (contrast the neurotypical who knows when to stop)

(5) Uncertainty is the Asperger mind's worst enemy; (contrast the neurotypical who understands that not all questions will or indeed can be answered)

From (2) we have that a number base b is interesting if it is obviously used in something which interests the Asperger mind. (6) immediately then confirms that binary is interesting to the Asperger mind.

Now the mathematician is interested in complex patterns but the Asperger mind, by (3), is most interested in the simplest possible patterns. Combine this with (4) and we see that doubling numbers starting from 1 is with good probability the most interesting activity for the Asperger mind.

Incorporating (1), we assert the fairly important theorem in Aspergery that numbers 2^n, n>=2 integer are really very meaningful. By (5) this is not good enough for the Asperger mind - what should n be?

From (8) it follows that the Asperger sufferer has a neurotypical mother, so by (7) she uses base 10. From (9) we see that a mother offers reassurance when there is doubt, so from (5) and (2) we see that the Asperger mind finds the number 10 interesting - but not as a counting device, merely as something to fill a void.

Filling in n=10 we see that 2^10=1024 is possibly the most meaningful number to the Asperger mind.

FWIW I haven't checked any of the nonsense I've just typed so anyone correcting a minor error can go suck a dick.

You know Randy's greatest regret in life has to be that he did not begin the strip with number "0". He started with "1", like some VB4 noob or something. The shame, the shame. No celebration of strip "1024", no matter how brilliant, can wash away the shame.

10:22, I'm not sure where you've gone wrong but let me try to give some more detail to help you.

The second principle excludes the possibility that the Asperger mind is able to be interested in something in isolation, i.e. without forming a connection to something else. This is clearly true: no Aspie is interested in anything unless he can form some wild and retarded association between it and something else.

IOW the series of Aspie interests can be drawn as a set of directed simple graphs where every node has non-zero outdegree. Cycles trivially follow.

You may be asking yourself, "How does an Aspie mind generate new interests?" The answer is, of course, that it does not. The Aspie mind is developed with a fixed set of interests and it cannot branch out from these once it has formed.

I have been meditating for some time and have come to an ontological conclusion that pacifies me somewhat. This blag is a necessary sin, just as Xkcd is a necessary virtue. All things balance out, similar to how the coin-cidence of mine and Randall's birth resulted in a general retardening of mental standards, leading to the very site we despise. Note how Carl "Ugly" Wheeler* was vanquished by I alone but to my dismay, my noble efforts merely caused him to be replaced by his Mexican, knock-off equivalent. I imagine if the border-crawler was destroyed in turn, someone even more terrible would rise up and assume the mantle of Moron Supreme. This is a lesson we can all learn from AnimÉ and why I have chosen to spare the current Lord of Waste and Bad Taste my own brand of justice. Purely empirical and logical of course, no sky dictator nonsense.

Of course, this means the world is still 300 Xkcds better off and assuming Roberto continues to sloth around that number should accumulate further. The world is slightly more Xkcd than Sucks if you get my meaning. Don't forget I contributed 2 such entries. Oh, and that wonderful Billiam fellow's treatise.

I might as well say this: To the Dunning-Krugerites of a thread long past, the Latin "maestros", I say to you in a tongue long dead of the world but alive in mind: delphinum natare doces, bitches

*We shall never see his like again. Oh wait, we will. And have. Every single poster on this thread is a moron of his caliber. Geniuses are exceptional but mouth-breathers are a dime a dozen infinity times over, and THAT my fiends is objective fact.

By my calculations, the world's net quality is +302 Xkcd's, as 404 is not a canon comic. I may make a graph but perhaps I shall leave that arduous task to Sir Randall Patrick Munroe, the Grand Admiral of Graphs, the Marquis of Memes, the Earl of Urls, the Tsar of Tables and the Count of Cunnilingus.

11:53, it's a fair hypothesis but I think it's giving the Aspie too much credit.

Intelligence is mostly pattern-matching and the able man in any field feels love in some sense for the patterns he finds. He does well because he is able to ignore irrelevant detail and hone in on key similarities and differences.

The Aspie seems to love a far cruder thing: repetition. If x is in the Aspie's comfort zone then x repeated one thousand times is orgasmic. Boredom never sets in and attempts to vary and refine are rejected with disgust rather than received on merit.

This might go some way to explaining why Aspies think of themselves as enjoying a gift: they cling on to some crude approximation of intelligence and try to emulate it. Sometimes they try so hard that you'd mistake them for real people.

No one expected or even cared that I would be here, but here I am. Hi!

So, what is comic 1000. What is it, indeed.

I'd sincerely prefer if Randall didn't even try to acknowledge that. Not only because this is comic 999 (no, xkcd fans, not making a comic and using that as a joke does not count as a comic!), but also because this accomplished nothing of meaningful in anyway.

Firstly, those stick figures. Most of them look exactly the same -- that is, they are not wearing hats or holding things that would differentiate them from other stick figures. For what purpose? Randall couldn't even bother to fill his exercise in self-indulgence in a way that would make me at least commend his effort?

Second, it's not intersting as a milestone comic. At all. It has some inner jokes, but not really enough. They're also so small you can barely see them. And the whole thing is not visually interesting.

But mostly: Randall, do me a favor. Make a 1024 commemorative and pretend you didn't even notice that number 1000 went past by. I know a lot of people here would call that pretentious and pandering, but at least that would be miles better than making a lame 1000th comic and making a joke as if the only milestones that matter are in base 2. Because NERDS, AMIRITE!

Also, this is not the 1000th comic and he should know it. He's the guy that likes point insignificant flaws on what other people's do, so he'd at least do not leave himself open to being hoisted by his own petard.

And, to be frank, I'm not caring about xkcd anymore. Or xkcdsucks. So, back to the burrow.

You know a blog has jumped the shark when an elite cadre of old-timers pop up from time to time and pat each other on the back. Nothing is interesting once personalities overtake ideas. I'm done posting here.

*draws a line under 5-10 minutes a day wasted for as long as I can remember*

Would have been nice if Randall did another five-part series. I don't think he's done that since the Secretary arc, 500 comics ago.

It would culminate on comic 1000 with a beautiful, yet tragic ending to a well crafted story. But this is just the fake-out ending. He would reveal a sixth part for comic 1001, in which the day is saved by... Barrel Boy, and his trusty flying ferret! The comic would have a note reminding us that 1001 was the true 1000th comic.

I can't imagine Randall doing something like this. It would be too awesome.

Maybe I'm the first person here to say it but I find reading fiction really boring. I have started reading hundreds of pieces of fiction of various lengths and probably finished a dozen throughout my life, not including schoolwork.

I find it hard to pick up a book without immediately engaging a mindset of, "Here's a consumable that some guy has produced to make money and/or unload some issues. What comfortable fantasy is he creating to enable this?" And that's how my whole reading experience goes. Fiction makes no point well which can't be better made with reference to reality. It takes me nowhere without giving me the uncomfortable sense that someone thinks this is where I am supposed to need to be in order to see something false or escape something true. Fiction idealises; it romanticises; it preaches. It falls asleep and it dreams. It is a selfish journey away from the truth.

The world already has enough that is beautiful and that is abhorrent - and reality is far more challenging to confront. Fiction has always seemed like the easy way out.

Ah yes, that well known paragon of virtue and ars gratia artis, the ER-producing, voodoo-following, global-warming-denying Michael Crichton. You provide an excellent example of the problem, cptnoremac.

>It takes me nowhere without giving me the uncomfortable sense that someone thinks this is where I am supposed to need to be in order to see something false or escape something true. Fiction idealises; it romanticises; it preaches. It falls asleep and it dreams. It is a selfish journey away from the truth.

Crichton wasn't just a man trying to make a buck by helping the depressed escape reality. He was a man with a disturbing ideology and his writing reflects it.

Enjoying his brand of fiction is no different from enjoying any religion. The brighter proselytisers don't really believe in the magic elves and the wizards but they do like the message of the alternative reality behind the ritual. The fantasy substitute, whether classist fancy, technocratic dystopia or egalitarian nightmare, inevitably justifies their world view and forgives their transgressions. This applies as much to royalist Shakespeare as to aspie xkcd.

Sure, the reader may put on a linguist's hat and consider the mastery of language in creative writing. Or he may don the shades of a marketing guru and admire how the author draws in the audience with a simplistic but alluring message. It is the limit of what I get out of fiction and I find it boring.

To tackle your list, Foster has that mentioned, "Isn't society totally like [X] and don't we all wish it were more like [kindergarten setup Y]!" crap pervading science fiction.

I've never read any Scott Smith - I was tempted to kneejerk dismiss based on a positive remark by King but that'd be, you know, prejudiced.

Cussler is outlandish enough to be worth a smile. It seems that both the worst and the best modern writing comes from those who are fictionalising the day job or some previous career. The dividing line separates the authors who take what they do/did very seriously from those who just seem to want to have a bit of fun on the side.

The later ones were milking for dollars (does anyone actually deny this?) but the Philosopher's Stone volume was good ol' prep school fantasy. I have nothing against that genre per se but I stopped with the Molesworth series when I was still in prep school.

is that meant to be an illustration/pisstake of that stuff further up the thread about autistic thought patterns ie 'if I don't understand something, it must be shit' ? sounds like a lot of the dipshits on the xkcd forums; well done - even the captcha says 'woota'

Why does everyone think that the level of English is the most accurate indication of someone's intelligence?

On the Internet, making a grammar error makes you some sort of retard, and everyone likes to go round correcting every mistake they see, because they'll be seen a geniuses.

You think people who use text speak on facebook walls are idiots? If you actually had any non-idiot friends, you'd know that a lot of intelligent, educated people use text speak.

From my experience, those who type properly with caps and punctuation are mostly pseudointellectual drop outs, artistic liberals, etc.

On the other hand, being bad at math is totally cool: "I'm so terrible at math I can't even add lololol," when mathematical ability correlates directly with intelligence, and skipping it serves no intelligible purpose.

Maybe I'm the first person here to say it but I find reading fiction really boring. I have started reading hundreds of pieces of fiction of various lengths and probably finished a dozen throughout my life, not including schoolwork.

I find it hard to pick up a book without immediately engaging a mindset of, "Here's a consumable that some guy has produced to make money and/or unload some issues. What comfortable fantasy is he creating to enable this?" And that's how my whole reading experience goes. Fiction makes no point well which can't be better made with reference to reality. It takes me nowhere without giving me the uncomfortable sense that someone thinks this is where I am supposed to need to be in order to see something false or escape something true. Fiction idealises; it romanticises; it preaches. It falls asleep and it dreams. It is a selfish journey away from the truth.

The world already has enough that is beautiful and that is abhorrent - and reality is far more challenging to confront. Fiction has always seemed like the easy way out.

Why maybe does I'm everyone the think first that person the here level to of say English it is but the I most find accurate reading indication fiction of really someone's boring. Intelligence?

I on have the started Internet, reading making hundreds a of grammar pieces error of makes fiction you of some various sort lengths of and retard, probably and finished everyone a likes dozen to throughout go my round life, correcting not every including mistake schoolwork. They I see, find because it they'll hard be to seen pick a up geniuses.

A you book think without people immediately who engaging use in text a speak mindset on of, Facebook "Here's walls a are consumable idiots? That if some you guy actually has had produced any to non-idiot make friends, money you'd and/or know unload that some a issues. Lot what of comfortable intelligent, fantasy educated is people he use creating text to speak.

Enable from this?" My and experience, that's those how who my type whole properly reading with experience caps goes. And fiction punctuation makes are no mostly point pseudo intellectual well drop which outs, can't artistic be liberals, better etc.

Made on with the reference other to hand, reality. Being it bad takes at me math nowhere is without totally giving cool: " Me I'm the so uncomfortable terrible sense at that math someone I thinks can't this even is add where lololol I," when am mathematical supposed ability to correlates need directly to with be intelligence, in and order skipping to it see serves something no false intelligible or accept purpose.

Something true. Fiction idealises; it romanticises; it preaches. It falls asleep and it dreams. It is a selfish journey away from the truth.

The world already has enough that is beautiful and that is abhorrent - and reality is far more challenging to confront. Fiction has always seemed like the easy way out.

Why maybe does I'm everyone the think first that person the here level to of say English it is but the I most find accurate reading indication fiction of really someone's boring. Intelligence?

I on have the started Internet, reading making hundreds a of grammar pieces error of makes fiction you of some various sort lengths of and retard, probably and finished everyone a likes dozen to throughout go my round life, correcting not every including mistake schoolwork. They I see, find because it they'll hard be to seen pick as up geniuses.

A you book think without people immediately who engaging use in text a speak mindset on of, Facebook "Here's walls a are consumable idiots? That if some you guy actually has had produced any to non-idiot make friends, money you'd and/or know unload that some a issues. Lot what of comfortable intelligent, fantasy educated is people he use creating text to speak.

Enable from this?" My and experience, that's those how who my type whole properly reading with experience caps goes. And fiction punctuation makes are no mostly point pseudo intellectual well drop which outs, can't artistic be liberals, better etc.

Made on with the reference other to hand, reality. Being it bad takes at me math nowhere is without totally giving cool: "Me I'm the so uncomfortable terrible sense at that math someone I thinks can't this even is add where lololol I," when am mathematical supposed ability to correlates need directly to with be intelligence, in and order skipping to it see serves something no false intelligible or accept purpose.

Something true. Fiction idealises; it romanticises; it preaches. It falls asleep and it dreams. It is a selfish journey away from the truth.

The world already has enough that is beautiful and that is abhorrent - and reality is far more challenging to confront. Fiction has always seemed like the easy way out.

Maybe I'm the first person here to say it but I find reading xkcd really boring. I have started reading hundreds of pieces of xkcd of various lengths and probably finished a dozen throughout my life, not including schoolwork.

I find it hard to pick up a xkcd without immediately engaging a mindset of, "Here's a consumable that Randall has produced to make money and/or unload some issues. What comfortable fantasy is he creating to enable this?" And that's how my whole reading experience goes. xkcd makes no point well which can't be better made with reference to reality. It takes me nowhere without giving me the uncomfortable sense that Randall thinks this is where I am supposed to need to be in order to see something false or escape something true. xkcd idealises; it romanticises; it preaches. It falls asleep and it dreams. It is a selfish journey away from the truth.

The world already has enough that is beautiful and that is abhorrent - and reality is far more challenging to confront. xkcd has always seemed like the easy way out.

I should like to present a Countdown Reform Bill which gives The Honourable THE FINAL COUNTDOWN the authority to incorporate the principles and methods in this seminal paper. I am sure the House would agree that THE FINAL COUNTDOWN's contributions to debate have been peerless and these proposals are essential to keep him relevant in an ever-incrementing world.

Brian, clearly panels 1 and 2 show a male and female looking at you with hands that have very long (and too many) fingers. They're peering over a wall or some shit and its night time. Panel 3 shows a round headed man, cocking his head slightly, with one black and one white eye and some weird facial decoration. Panel 4 then has some unrelated nonsense that doesn't make sense. But the screams of AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA throughout are because the first 3 panels are creepy nightmare shit that make no sense.

1001 is clearly a view of two roads with tunnels at the end, and with the moon in the center.

In the second panel, the moon has received a nuke, which destroyed the top of it.

The third panel is a view of the moon with the Baron of Munchausen getting it on with the queen. The scream comes from the pain of the baron crushing the queen's breast to get milk (or from the pain of the nuke, it's not totally clear because the art is a little foggy)

The fourth panel is someone watching the baron of munchausen movie in which the camera turns around the bed, and he thinks the bed is turning. Also, the girl wants to impress him by appearing nerdy because she can't lactate, so she talks about building films we see in movies.

All in all, I thought the art was really good, and the comic is really well constructed, plus terry gillian reference, you gotta give him points for that.

The panels in this strip are in reverse - the clue is the "EARLIER THAT DAY..." in the 4th panel. In that panel Randall and Megan are living glorious life to the full, watching TV and imagining how fun things would be if only they were engineers building real things and not just science-fans.

Then in the third panel we have a birds-eye view of Megan at the doctor's office being told she has cancer. They are leaning over the table at each other because Megan is a bit deaf from the AAAAAAAAAAAAA background sound which represents Randy's denial.

In the second panel Megan is in bed, weak from cancer. Randall is still AAAAAAing loudly to make it all go away.

In the first panel Megan is in bed, weak and having lost her hair from chemo. The AAAAAAing continues.

This strip as a whole shows that Randall has recognised his denial and observed how immaturely he reacted. It is a great leap forward in the emotional development of the author and he is to be congratulated, possibly with some sort of medal.

Here's a thought: Randy's current basement-chained playmate\\\\\\ bride is not Megan, right? Megan left you, years ago. So what if Megan became a cougar? That would explain the cougar attacks cartoon. Randall's warning them away, all the pretty, pretty boys from whom Megan wishes to suck\\\\\ drain the life force!

The only reason why there is this 1000/700 "coincidence" is because you were too lazy to do a review of 998 or 999. Either that or you purposefully skipped them so that you would manufacture such an event.

The only reason That's what she's post exists is because Dicksmash McIroncock was too lazy to write anything meaningful. Either that or Dicksmash McIroncock purposefully wrote it so that he would manufacture such a meme.

The boring fiction post was good but I don't think it was supposed to force a meme.

Although anyone who talks about memes and how organic they are probably needs to keep their 4chan tabs open and close all others. Blankety Blank was already old in the mid-'80s when I started watching it and, like 4chan, Les Dawson reminded you of that Old English spirit of misogyny and casual racism. The difference is that everyone on 4chan is an "Anonymous" coward.

Carl and Rob have no excuse, but in FAIRNESS, Randall Munroe does: he occasionally does "bonus comics" http://xkcd.com/asmarterplanet/ and it's not clear that they're numbered. He may be closer to 1028 than we think, even with a 404 metajoke.

It's that famed German bureaucratic spirit. All points must be restated lest efficacy be lost.

Also the reason that German conversations generally tail off after the third exchange, as the burden of restating everything said until then becomes too challenging. Hence the Deutsch lack of humor: "What did ze president of Amerika say to ze Reichesbundeskanzler of Germany?" "I don't know, what?" "You do not know vat he said, in fact it vas ze following..."

Enough justified German-bashing, though, my main question is whether this blog's only viable meme (that grammar one) was forced or not? I would argue it wasn't technically, some would though. Why?

If those dates are anything to go by he checked Wikipedi..reliable sources for at least FOUR of these. It is also sweet that he has put needless detail for CHESS because that's like the oldest geek game amirite? "Look guys SOME computer beat a TOP human in '96 but SOME human beat a TOP computer in '05 therefore computers CAN but might NOT beat humans LOL ISN'T PRIMARY SCHOOL LOGIC AND SCIENCE GREAT?"

On a more general note, "perfectly" doesn't mean perfectly in the layperson sense but is a term used to describe a restriction on the opponent's behaviour. This need to doublespeak a drawback as a feature is one of a great long list of properties of computer scientists which are... Orwellian.

Re the grammar v. mathematics meme, IIRC the poster stated he was pasting a dozen or so set pieces that he'd prepared for various situations. I'm not sure whether this is the traditional method of forcing but offline it might be analogised to throwing the content of various buckets of shit on various walls until eventually something sticks.

If you mean the "I don't think it's okay" then I think that's the blog's only successful fill-the-gaps/blankety-blank thing. I determine this not because it's posted frequently but because at least once it's had one angrily correcting another for not doing it right. When some Asperger's sufferer has a memeleptic seizure because HURR THAT'S NOT BEEN COPIED EXACTLY RIGHT then you know a meme's been created.

Computers MAY never outplay humans? No shit, Randy; I think you can change that MAY to a WILL. You've got two games where the all the rules aren't known up front and may change over the course of the game (Mao & Calvinball), one that is completely random chance with no strategic component (Snakes and Ladders), and one where all participants "win" (7 Minutes).

I've never played Starcraft, but I assume it's like most other strategy games I've played; the AI doesn't really get "better" on higher difficulties, it just gets bonuses that are unavailable to the human. I'd put computer strategy games in the "may never" category when the AI doesn't get bonuses. Civilization/Starcraft/etc have way more moves to evaluate than any traditional game, often have multiple win states, and the AI is handicapped by the computer using a good chunk of its processing power to render the game itself.

The default Starcraft AI does cheat on the very highest difficulty. There's actually competitions to provide custom Starcraft AIs so it's not out of place on this chart.

A game AI isn't doing a brute-force lookahead. The combinatorial explosion is only important for a very limited class of solutions. You won't get perfect play from such AIs, but you only need to beat humans. Some kind of machine learning solution could be used to train an AI up.

The AI being handicapped by rendering is absurd in the same sense that a human being handicapped by breathing is absurd. Also Starcraft's rendering isn't that heavy.

The only reason to put Starcraft in the "may never" category is that it's unlikely to endure for a zillion years like chess, so likely we'll all move on before anybody bothers to make a superior machine.

@Gone fishingYou're probably thinking of Android Girlfriend or its follow-up, Android Boyfriend. Both of them suck because he drew the robots in the same way as he draws normal people, for funk's sake.

I think the captcha thing is another mini-meme. I'd stress calling them that, because they're somewhere between memes and inside jokes. In the same way as GOOMH is (thankfully) localized within the xkcd fanbase, all of our 'memes' are actually mini-memes. I think the distinction has to be made.

Also, I think Randall should have added Dungeons and Dragons in the bottom category of 1002. The fact he hasn't just makes me want to nerrrrd raaage!!

"On a more general note, "perfectly" doesn't mean perfectly in the layperson sense but is a term used to describe a restriction on the opponent's behaviour. This need to doublespeak a drawback as a feature is one of a great long list of properties of computer scientists which are... Orwellian."

it just means they've solved the game. that is, they've found the ideal sequence of moves that will guarantee either a win or a draw, which includes the ideal response to the opponent's moves, etc.

i'm not sure what doublespeak you're talking about here, but i think 'knowing the ideal response to every possible move' counts as perfect even for a layman

anyway yes there is an old meme. it goes basically 'oh your name is eric blair, eh? how... ORWELLIAN.' the caps are important.

At some particular game state, it is possible that there are several moves which guarantee at least a draw and some which might not even guarantee a draw. The best player doesn't necessarily even choose one which will guarantee a draw. Instead he chooses the move out of the set of all possible moves which he judges most likely to make his opponent fuck up so that he wins. Human competition is about exploiting the flaws in your opponent, typical or peculiar.

e.g. a "perfect" draughts computer playing various opponents may never lose but it may never win either since it always possible to respond to it with an equally "perfect" move. But a good human draughts player playing various opponents may lose occasionally but win lots. N.B. that draughts has only been solved weakly from a starting board - for simpler games it may genuinely be possible to play perfectly.

when I hear that a computer can play perfectly in a fair game, I don't assume "it can always win." perfectly implies as good as it is possible to be, given the game's rules. a computer can play tic tac toe perfectly even though it's simple enough that most humans can always force a draw. the computer never makes a bad move. for any game that we've solved, this is true of the computer.

"Instead he chooses the move out of the set of all possible moves which he judges most likely to make his opponent fuck up so that he wins"

this is basically what computers do, except instead of relying on the opponent to screw up, it chooses the move out of the set of all possible moves which is most likely to ultimately end in victory, no matter what the opponent does. a human can't somehow exploit the computer's perfection to achieve victory in a solved game--they can, at best, pull out a draw by also playing perfectly.

look at it a different way. if you had two computers play against each other in a solved game, they would draw every time (unless, of course, it's a solved game in which one player can always force a victory). this doesn't make their gameplay any less perfect--it just means that when you pitch two perfect opponents against each other, nobody wins.

"Human competition is about exploiting the flaws in your opponent, typical or peculiar."

the thing is there is no flaw to exploit in a computer that is playing a solved game. the closest thing is "if I also play flawlessly, then I will be able to force a draw." but if you make one mistake, the computer will be able to capitalize on it and force a victory.

I summarized what had been said because there were a few comments in between, so to avoid others getting lost... and also to point out the blatant stupidity of what was said, so yes, I pretty much copied it. You like it? Cool.

And then, just after your comment, another one trying to discredit me because I am supposedly german. How pathetic, but apparently that's no news in here.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

Frequently Asked Questions

Divided into two convenient categories, based on whether you think this website

Rob's Rants

When he's not flipping a shit over prescriptivist and descriptivist uses of language, xkcdsucks' very own Rob likes writing long blocks of text about specific subjects. Here are some of his excellent refutations of common responses to this site. Think of them as a sort of in-depth FAQ, for people inclined to disagree with this site.